Clear, Hold, Build. The People are the Prize. Focus on the Population, their Needs, and Security. Most of the Important Decisions are Not Made By Generals. The More Force Used, the Less Effective It Is. The Best Weapons in a COIN Fight Do Not Shoot.

These are the ideas that were supposed to win the war. Boiled down to bullet points, ready for slide shows, the tenets of COIN doctrine sounded sensible enough. But the war wasn’t fought in Power Point. The war was won or lost every day in the dusty lanes and spare villages of southern and eastern Afghanistan. In the thousands of small interactions, encounters, arguments, village raids, IED blasts, and tea summits between the US military and the Afghan people.

These photographs illuminate the delicate dance between these groups, and what was at stake for both of them. Together they attempt to answer hard questions about our 13 years of occupation in Afghanistan. What did this have to do with our War on Terror? What kind of security and development would stabilize Afghanistan? How much can we expect from these young men and women? What do we mean by a just war? What does it matter at a granular level, the violence converting a pastoral homeland for one group into a battlefield for the other?